


I Burn, I Pine, I Perish

by sinuous_curve



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Gen, Temperature Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-20
Updated: 2011-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-22 20:51:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Erik is attracted to John’s -- Pyro’s --  insouciant slouch, and his well of constantly flaring anger, almost as much as he is attracted to John’s powers. The years have taught Erik that more delicacy is required for leadership that simply amassing power concentrated beneath a single focal point. The dispossessed and powerful mutants  who gravitate toward Erik are a singularly volatile group. A certain finesse is required for creating any cohesion, and any semblance of loyalty. John burns bright among the special; he is a kindred spirit and Erik is drawn to him like a moth. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	I Burn, I Pine, I Perish

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed, with due thanks to lyo for audiencing and encouraging.

Erik is attracted to John’s -- Pyro’s -- insouciant slouch, and his well of constantly flaring anger, almost as much as he is attracted to John’s powers. The years have taught Erik that more delicacy is required for leadership that simply amassing power concentrated beneath a single focal point. The dispossessed and powerful mutants who gravitate toward Erik are a singularly volatile group. A certain finesse is required for creating any cohesion, and any semblance of loyalty. John burns bright among the special; he is a kindred spirit and Erik is drawn to him like a moth.

“Do you really think we can do it?” John asks one evening, sprawled indolently over the battered leather couch in Erik’s makeshift headquarters.

There are precisely two people in the Brotherhood Erik permits this level of familiarity. The other is Raven, who is the closest thing Erik has to a right hand man. And what exists between them is so inextricably wound in Charles as their shared point of origin that it is difficult for Erik to determine whether she is a friend to him, or a symbol brought to life.

John is impossibly young, and filled with the reckless rage that only youth can muster. He burns with it.

Erik glances up, eyebrow arched. “What precisely do you mean by _this_?”

John shrugs, turning his silver lighter between his fingers. Erik has resisted the temptation to use the young man as an information source with regards to Charles and his merry band of obnoxious mosquitoes chirping about human/mutant solidarity and the potential for peace. In forty years Erik has not changed his mind. Peace is not an option.

He can’t imagine how the mutants like John -- his mutants, Erik’s thinks of them -- would cope with a world wherein they were no longer required to operate on the constant defensive. What would happen to that riveting little tick of his with the lighter? Would he spend as many pensive hours holding palmfuls of fire?

“Winning, I guess,” he says, smiling crookedly. “Taking over the _world_.”

He emphasizes the word with a dispassionate fury that smolders constantly in his eyes. There is nothing cold in young Mister Allardyce, though Erik supposes it would perhaps be stranger if he were edged with ice. He is fuel for a constant fire, after all. Perhaps there’s molten metal in his veins rather than blood.

His rage reminds Erik keenly of himself, in the gap between escaping Nazi torturers and being found by Charles in the water. A psychic leviathan, to be sure, and the last time Erik ever felt the potential for another way. But that story is tired in his own ears and he is an old man. He wonders what happened to John to cause such a crystalline violence.

Erik leans back in his chair and studied John. He looks much the same as he did when he stood on Charles’ side of the board in his jeans and dark shirt, sleeves shoved up his arms. His wrists are pale and delicate and the tendons beneath the thin skin flex as he toys with his lighter. The gesture is so completely unselfconscious, even unthinking. John can’t create fire; he confessed as much to Erik with furious shame dripping like self-loathing from his tongue.

The world is full of fire. It is an element when ice is not.

“I might ask why you’re here if you harbor doubts.”

John pushes himself up and plants his feet solidly on the floor. He leans forward, elbows brace on his upper thighs with amusement curling in his sneer. His lighter glints as he taps his blunt fingernail against the polished side. “I just believe so much,” he says, smirking.

Erik arches an eyebrow once more. “Truly, your commitment is a noble inspiration to us all.”

His own cynicism has never been so biting as John’s. Erik found personal redemption and meaning in single-minded focus that only momentarily wavered, and even that he blames more on the curious and occasionally repellent magnetism of Charles Xavier. There is a reason, despite everything, Erik would still have to confess Charles to be his best friend. John watches the world collapse and smiles with _schadenfruede_.

John chuckles, and flicks his lighter open. His swipes his thumb along the wheel in a wonderfully practiced gesture and a small orange flame blossoms to light. It is impossibly bright and vivid in the austere gloom of Erik’s unfinished sanctum. It struggles against the darkness and casts flickering shadows on the planes of John’s face.

“What we can do,” John says, cupping his palm beneath the flame and gathering up a handful of it. “It doesn’t just make us unique. I hate that -- that fucking line. We’re all so goddamn special and powers are just like red hair or a birthmark or being able to draw. It’s _value neutral_ ,” he says the word with a sneered, rote quality. Charles’s benevolent professor’s voice sounds like a ghost’s moan. “That’s wrong. It makes us -- more important. And _they_ shouldn’t get to make the fucking choices.”

Erik smiles thinly. He never does tire of these revelatory moments coming from his chosen ones. There’s so vindicating. “Go on.”

John’s eyes narrow and the flame in his hand begins to expand.

Slowly at first, but with increasing speed, fingers of fire begin to snake tentative tendrils outward. The light bathes Erik’s room in a worm, amber glow. It’s appealing, almost, like the comfort offered by a fireplace or a light in the darkness. John’s fingers flex and curl with minute precision as he plays his power like a maestro at his instrument. The flame licks at the furnishings and the walls. They are almost alive, exploratory in their movements.

“When you use your power what does it feel like?” John asks. His eyes are distant and wide.

The tendrils curl around the room back to Erik, gathering across his desk like inquisitive animals waiting to see whether he is friend or enemy. One extends to touch his index finger and the warmth is shocking and engulfing, but it does not burn. John exhales long and slow, tipping his head so the line of his throat is extended and made vulnerable behind the protection of his fire.

The fire continues up Erik’s hand and wrist, arm and elbow. He can feel the heath as a physical, tangible weight against his skin through the fabric of his shirt. It coils around his neck and the danger is quite suddenly a palpable thing thrumming between him and John. The threat, intentional or not, is unmistakably implicit in their positions. And the fire becomes hotter.

“It’s cold and expansive,” Erik says, curling his fingers into the polished wood of his desk. All the metal in the room begins to hum, including the zipper of John’s jeans, and the amulet around his neck, and ligter between his fingers.

John sighs. “Mine is like setting myself on fire.”

Violently, the tendrils left behind on Erik’s chest split into a hundred different fingers of flame that wrap around Erik like a molten second skin hovering inches from his flesh. They are no longer warm, but hot, burning alive things that shudder and snap and spark. He can feel their pressure at his pulse points, where the skin is like paper and his blood thunder in her veins beneath them. His blood is tinged with heavy metals and they melt at the heat, and surge faster.

He smells the acridity of smoke.

“Are you going to burn me?” Erik asks.

John’s eyes are wide and hectic. “Could I?”

Erik smiles. “You could certainly try.”

For a moment, their eyes lock and, yes, Erik is a man for whom traditional honor has been perverted into something so much more enticing. He and John are not oppositional forces and the things they will be able to do are. They are intoxicating.

And then John blinks and seems to realize what he’s doing. He retracts the flames and they snap through the air like whips, then vanished into his clenched fist. It’s cold without them, and Erik and John are both breathing hard.

“I have no intention of losing this war,” Erik says.

“Good,” John says, and shoves his lighter into his pocket with shaking hands.


End file.
